Let us form a supposition, (no foolish or ungrounded supposition,) that,
in an age when men are infinitely more disposed to heat themselves with
political than religious controversies, the former should entirely
prevail, as we see that in some places they have prevailed, over the
latter,--and that the Catholics of Ireland, from the courtship paid them
on the one hand, and the high tone of refusal on the other, should, in
order to enter into all the rights of subjects, all become Protestant
Dissenters, and, as the others do, take all your oaths. They would all
obtain their civil objects; and the change, for anything I know to the
contrary, (in the dark as I am about the Protestant Dissenting tenets,)
might be of use to the health of their souls. But what security our
Constitution, in Church or State, could derive from that event, I cannot
possibly discern. Depend upon it, it is as true as Nature is true, that,
if you force them out of the religion of habit, education, or opinion,
it is not to yours they will ever go. Shaken in their minds, they will
go to that where the dogmas are fewest,--where they are the most
uncertain,--where they lead them the least to a consideration of what
they have abandoned.
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